“And now the care and hopes of life are pass’d, They please their fancies and indulge their taste: At brooks and streams, regardless of their shame, Each sex, promiscuous, strives to quench their flame; Nor do they strive in vain to quench it there, For thirst and life at once extinguish’d are. Thus in the brooks the dying bodies sink, But heedless still the rash survivers drink.

“So much uneasy down the wretches hate, They fly their beds, to struggle with their fate, But if decaying strength forbids to rise, The victim crawls and rolls, till on the ground he lies: Each shuns his bed as each would shun his tomb, And thinks the infection only lodged at home.

“Here one, with fainting steps, does slowly creep O’er heaps of dead, and straight augments the heap: Another, while his strength and tongue prevail’d, Bewails his friend, and falls himself, bewail’d: This, with imploring looks, surveys the skies, The last dear office of his closing eyes, But finds the heavens implacable, and dies.